Just in case anyone else comes upon this thread after doing a search for the "best driver for their Marvell 9128 SATA 6G controller", I'll include a link that I found to the latest drivers, firmware and MRU (Marvell Raid Utility) here:
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/marvell.htmNote that as of today (January 23, 2011), Gigabyte does not actually use the Marvell driver even if you do a full driver install from the Gigabyte Install CD and/or download and install the latest Marvell 9128 driver from the Gigabyte website. Instead Gigabyte uses the Microsoft ACHI driver combined with a virtual "console" driver that allows the Marvell Raid Utility (MRU) to communicate with the 9128 controller. Gigabyte does include a driver on the CD that can be manually installed (version 1.0.0.1036) but installing this breaks the MRU software. You need to install the updated MRU from Station Driver in order for it to communicate with the actual Marvell driver.
To add a little more confusion (I'm still confused...), I have not been able to find a way to uninstall the Marvell "console driver" (the virtual driver that allows the MRU to interface with the MS ACHI driver) other than going into Device Manager, System Devices, and uninstalling the driver for the "Marvell 91xx Config Device". This virtual driver does not seem to be able to talk to the actual Marvell 9128 driver, only the MS ACHI driver.
Also, elsewhere on the web I discovered that some of the newer released BIOS for Gigabyte motherboards included updated firmware for the Marvell 9128 controller and to install it you have to sometimes make sure the BIOS setting for "GSATA_6+7 firmware" is on "Auto" so the latest BIOS firmware is loaded for the 9128. If this is set to "On Chip", the firmware revision from the 9128 is used instead of the updated BIOS's firmware.
If you install the firmware from Station Drivers (above), my understanding is since it is newer that the on-chip firmware, it will now be loaded instead of the BIOS's firmware (if you have the "Auto" setting configured). You can flip back and forth between the BIOS's included 9128 firmware and the downloaded firmware by changing the "GSATA_6+7" setting in the BIOS.
Unfortunately I don't know personally how well this updated firmware works (yet), but there are people talking highly about it in the french forums at Station Drivers. I don't own an SSD so I can't test it on "very fast" drives. I am using two fast SATA 3G hard drives that work very well on Intel's SATA controller in RAID 0 so there is little use in me switching them to the Marvell 9128 at this time (one day I'm sure I will pick up a 6G drive that can take advantage of the 6G connection; hopefully the new drivers, firmware and MRU work better than what Gigabyte is currently offering). Anyone who tries these updates for the 9128, please post here with your results so others can benefit.
Finally I will mention here that if you are using a drive configuration that has an I/O throughput above roughly 150 MB/s without a SATA 6G interface to the drive(s) you need to manually enable "Turbo SATA" in the BIOS. The default setting is "AUTO" and this will enable "Turbo SATA" whenever a 6G SATA device is connected.
Note Turbo SATA reconfigures the PCIe bus to the Marvell 9128 controller. Using NON-"Turbo SATA" mode, the 9128 connects to the chipset through a PCIe 1.0 x1 bus. "Turbo SATA" mode uses 1/2 the PCIe bus from the video card and now the 9128 is connected through a PCIe 2.0 x8 bus (16x more throughput compared to the PCIe 1.0 x1). While in theory this means your video card will be slower, the reality is if you have a single GPU, nothing available today can fully utilize even a PCIe 2.0 x8 bus so you shouldn't see any video performance reduction. If you have dual video cards or a dual GPU card, this may reduce the video performance.
As a final note: I am not certain that all Gigabyte motherboards use the PCIe 1.0 x1 vs PCIe 2.0 x8 switch to connect to the 9128 controller (check your manual). This is accurate for the P55A-UD3R and P55A-UD4P motherboards that I own as well as most (if not all) of the P55/H55 motherboards that I considered purchasing. Other manufacturers use different bus connections for the 9128, for example ASUS typically uses a set of 4 PCIe 1.0 x1 buses combined together (assuming no PCIe x1 card is installed)
